Sunday, September 25, 2005

Brave New Database

Suspects arrested or detained by federal authorities could be forced to provide samples of their DNA that would be recorded in a central database under a provision of a Senate bill to expand government collection of personal data.

They won't even have to arrest you and charge you with anything. They just have to detain you. The feds will be able to pick you up for whatever reason they want and put your DNA in a national database.

3 comments:

There's a financial side to DNA testing: health and disability insurance.

Health insurance companies can deny claims for pre-existing conditions if you haven't had insurance for the past 2 years. Disability insurance doesn't even have the 2 year limit.

Given the government corruption we're facing, I would not be surprised to see attempts to revise medical insurance laws, i.e., no 2-year limit on pre-existing conditions, mandatory screening for genetic markers for breast and colon cancers, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's, etc.

In the long term, there's trillions of dollars at stake here for insurance companies if they can weasel their way out of covering genetically based conditions. If the feds try to get universal DNA sampling and testing mandated by pretending this is counterterrorism, insurance companies have a huge motive to support the effort.

It's a huge invasion of privacy and I think it is too unpopular to make it into law, but I always seem to underestimate the Bush admin's capacity to screw up the country.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (retired) was a naval flight officer who commanded an aircraft squadron and was operations officer of USS Theodore Roosevelt, the carrier that fought the Kosovo War. He earned a master-of-arts degree in post-modern imperialism at the U.S. Naval War College where many of his essays became required student reading. Jeff’s weekly satires on U.S. foreign policy high jinks appear at Antiwar.com and his critically applauded novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Jeff lives with dogs in a house by the beach on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and in the summer he has a nice tan.